I don't know why Americans are so shielded from Canadian news

[Recursion]

No, this wasn't remotely the "first Canadian mass shooting" since École Polytechnique.

In 1992 an associate professor at Concordia university shot and killed multiple colleagues and students
In 1999 a disgruntled employee of the Ottawa transit system shot and killed multiple coworkers and commuters
In 2011 a man shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and then went on a rampage killing several other people and then himself
In 2014 a gunman shot his way into the Parliament building after killing the sentry at the National War Memorial
In 2017 a gunman entered a mosque and shot multiple worshippers

I get that there's an American media bubble and we only really care about stuff that happens within US borders, but this whole "The US is the only place this happens" line is tired and makes us look kind of stupid.

[mitch96]

1. Go to CBC.ca for Canadian news. BBC for British news, Deutchweil for German

I look around at different news sites beside ours... It gives me perspective..
m

[Disaffected]

50. Al Jazera

is another v good source.

[mitch96]

52. Sure, how about RT and sputnik? ............

[PSPS]

2. I've never heard it referred to as such

In fact, NPR just played a piece from a reporter in Canada and they referred to it as "the worst mass shooting in Canadian history" which is, in fact, correct.

Also, all the wires and major newspapers reported the story starting Saturday night.

Maybe your point is you heard someone say, "the US is the only place this happens." If so, I'm sure they mean the US is the only place this happens on an almost daily basis which is, in fact, true. It seems to have diminished somewhat lately because of the changes required by the pandemic. For example, the number of mass shootings in the US at schools has decreased lately because the schools are closed.

[Recursion]

5. Obviously it doesn't even come close to happening on a daily basis in the US

Mother Jones did an extensive media survey and found 82 random mass shootings in the US between 1980 and 2018; there's a higher per capita rate in Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Serbia, and most of Latin America.

[PSPS]

10. The average is one mass shooting in the US every 15 days

I'd like to see your source for your absurd claim of "82 random shootings between 1980 and 2018." Maybe you're relying on the term "random" which can be twisted to mean anything.

[Recursion]

14. No. Seriously, read MotherJones on this

They've done the work. There were about 90 between 1980 and now.

[PSPS]

18. I'll be happy to, if it exists. Cough up a link.

Many reputable articles exist from news organizations that have "done the work." I've never seen even one that has come to the conclusion you claim.

[Recursion]

21. Here

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

119 mass shootings in the US since 1982

[PSPS]

38. Thanks. I see your problem.

First, you originally said "82 random mass shootings" which is not what the MJ article says.

Second, even your "revised" claim of "119 mass shootings in the US since 1982" is not what the MJ article says.

Third, the MJ piece isn't about "mass shootings" at all. It's about "mass killings."

The MJ article has this among their criteria:

"The perpetrator took the lives of at least four people" (not including the shooter) -- that's the usual threshold to be considered a "mass killing" as opposed to a "mass shooting."

So the confusion here is between "mass killing" and "mass shooting." I suppose one can disagree if one is "better" or "worse" than the other and whether one is more worthy of concern than the other, but at least you provided a link to the study and I thank you for that.

[roamer65]

3. Canada doesn't have nearly daily school shootings.

If you went the route of Australian gun control, you probably would eliminate the every 3 or so year episodes of mass killings.

[frazzled]

6. The US doesn't have daily school shootings either

If you're trying to argue a valid point, it helps not to hyperbolize and stick to the facts. They're bad enough as is.

Published Nov. 14, 2019
Updated Dec. 20, 2019

Across the country this year, according to media reports, at least 11 shootings have taken place on American high school or college campuses, including the attack in Santa Clarita, Calif., on Thursday. And school officials and law enforcement agencies have responded to dozens more credible threats of attacks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/us/school-shootings-list.html

[Recursion]

8. It hasn't worked for Australia

Australia changed their laws in 1996 after port Arthur. Since then

A disgruntled student shot multiple other students at Monash University in 2002
A woman shot her family, several random passersby, and herself in NSW in 2005
A man shot seven people with a shotgun in South Australia in 2011
A lone gunman in Sydney shot up a cafe, took the survivors hostage, and engaged in a shootout with the police in 2014
A man in Victoria shot an entire family and then engaged in a standoff and shootout with the police in 2015
A man in Melbourne shot multiple people in front of his apartment building and held hostages until a police shootout in 2017
A man shot multiple random pedestrians in Melbourne in 2019
A man shot multiple random pedestrians in Darwin in 2019
A man shot up a nightclub in Melbourne in 2019

We're really just not that special here.

[Fiendish Thingy]

11. 9 mass shootings in Australia in 18 years?

That’s about two months worth in the US.

When it comes to mass shootings, America is exceptional.

[Recursion]

16. No, it's not. We're just not exceptional. Finland has more than we do

Most of central and eastern Europe do. Again: I know Americans ignore foreign news. But we shouldn't.

[Phoenix61]

15. That's nine incidents since 1996 and you're

saying it didn’t work. I’d say it’s working damn well. That’s less than one every other year. How many incidents have there been here?

[Recursion]

17. That's more than in the years before it, so, no, it didn't work

Australia has 1/13th as many people as the US, so that would be the equivalent of 117 mass shootings in the US in that time, which is slightly more than we've had. So we're actually doing a little better than Australia.

[Phoenix61]

23. Again, where are you getting your stats. nt

[Recursion]

25. MotherJones for the US

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/

The Australia list is just the incidents I know about; for that matter it may be an undercount.

[Phoenix61]

34. Interesting fact about their stats.

The shootings occurred in a public place. (Except in the case of a party on private property in Crandon, Wisconsin, and another in Seattle, where crowds of strangers had gathered, essentially constituting a public crowd.) Crimes primarily related to gang activity or armed robbery are not included, nor are mass killings that took place in private homes (often stemming from domestic violence).

[Recursion]

36. Fair point, but we don't have DV or gang stats for other countries, either

That said, I'll concede that the US has a signficantly worse problem with both than the rest of the OECD.

We need gun control, but not because we are outliers in mass shootings -- we aren't, really. It's because we're outliers in "normal" shootings.

[Phoenix61]

39. Absolutely. I used to be an investigator for CPS

A gun in the home was always an issue. People with substance abuse issues and a bad temper really shouldn’t have them.

[Recursion]

37. What's weird to me is that mass shootings don't happen in *every* country

But they happen in some. The Netherlands but not Belgium. Germany but not Austria. Norway but not Sweden (but Sweden does have random grenade attacks). The US but not Mexico (but Mexico has higher overall gun violence).

I think there's a lot here we don't understand.

[treestar]

28. Some of those sound like they could be

just crime like what people say happens in Chicago.

How are you defining mass shooting?

[Recursion]

29. The same way MotherJones did

"indiscriminate rampages in public places resulting in four or more victims killed by the attacker"

[treestar]

31. Then we don't need gun control?

It did no good for Australia, so what was the point?

[Recursion]

32. We do, but not because of mass shootings

Mass shootings aren't what gun control helps. Gun control helps with "normal" shootings, and "normal" shootings are where Australia is doing 1000 times better than we are.

[treestar]

57. I see

thanks for the research.

[muriel_volestrangler]

59. If we do take the MJ definition (which is for 3 victims killed, after 2013)

then, of those Australian incidents you listed, using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_crimes_in_Australia :

A disgruntled student shot multiple other students at Monash University in 2002 - 2 victims dead
A woman shot her family, several random passersby, and herself in NSW in 2005 - I can find the Sally Hunter incident - she killed 3 family members at home - but not one with passers-by
A man shot seven people with a shotgun in South Australia in 2011 - 3 victims dead, but in their own home, not a public place
A lone gunman in Sydney shot up a cafe, took the survivors hostage, and engaged in a shootout with the police in 2014 - 2 victims dead
A man in Victoria shot an entire family and then engaged in a standoff and shootout with the police in 2015 - can't find which shooting this was; was it "in a public place" as MJ uses, since it was a family?
A man in Melbourne shot multiple people in front of his apartment building and held hostages until a police shootout in 2017 - 1 victim dead
A man shot multiple random pedestrians in Melbourne in 2019 - 1 victim dead
A man shot multiple random pedestrians in Darwin in 2019 - 4 victims dead
A man shot up a nightclub in Melbourne in 2019 - 2 victims dead

So that's one incident that does fulfil MJ's criteria, and one I can't track down, in 18 years. In that time, MJ lists 86 for the USA; 57 since Jan 2013 when the "3 or more victims" limit was adopted. Australia's population of 25 million is a thirteenth of the USA.

[Hortensis]

4. Americans interested in their world can read Canadian news all day long

if they wish. Big, broad happening nation, even if small population.

[trixie2]

7. In the Detroit area we get CBC Windsor

Cool shows and unTrumpian news.

[roamer65]

19. When they went to a digital signal they lost a lot of range.

I get my local TV via antenna.

Very hard to get their digital signal versus their old analog signal.

[Recursion]

26. Does Canada even use the same digital codec as the US?

I always thought the switch from analog was a solution in search of a problem. But Canada is NTSC, right?

[roamer65]

27. Yes. ATSC 1.0. 8-VSB.

Occasionally I get the signal, it the weather is right.

If one goes to Windsor, most antennas point to our transmitters in Detroit.

[roamer65]

60. Yay! Moved a special antenna and I am getting CBC Windsor now.

[trixie2]

61. I love that channel

[roamer65]

63. Yeah I do 2.

I like watching the National at 10pm.

[Fiendish Thingy]

9. The fact that you had to go back nearly 30 years to gather a handful of Canadian incidents proves

That the US is the only place this happens, with any regularity.

6 mass shootings in 28 years in Canada? That’s an average month in the US.

[Recursion]

12. No, that's not "an average month" in the US

and I went back to Ecole Polytechnique, which the media are reporting as the "last mass shooting in Canada", I suppose because Muslim victims don't count.

The US has had something like 100 mass shootings since 1980, so, no, not "an average month".

Finland has a higher mass shooting rate than the US. The Netherlands are roughly tied with us. Most of Latin America is higher, as is a lot of Eastern Europe. Norway has the highest death by mass shooting rate in the world.

Again: I get that Americans live in a media bubble. But we need to stop. The rest of the world does actually exist, and that includes their mass shootings.

[Phoenix61]

20. No, just no.

I just did a quick check and the data I’m finding does not support your claim. Where are you getting your stats from?

[Recursion]

22. What are you talking about?

I listed the mass shootings in Canada since Ecole Polytechnique. There were 5 of them.

The US has 9 times as many people as Canada, so that's the equivalent of 45 mass shootings over the same time period. According to MotherJones (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/) we've had 110 over that period. So, yes, we're worse with random mass gun violence than Canada (we all knew that) but this idea that we're somehow existentially different just isn't backed up here.

[PSPS]

40. The OP seems to be confusing "mass killings" with "mass shootings"

[treestar]

30. We have become conditioned to think this is the

place most mass shootings occur. We're even losing tourism because of it.

[Fiendish Thingy]

33. 90 mass shootings since 1980? That's completely false!

Using the generally accepted metric of any shooting with 4 or more casualties, there were340 mass shootings in the US in 2018 alone!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2018

You must be using the NRA’s stats...

[Recursion]

35. Nope. MotherJones has the receipts here

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map/

112 in the US since 1982

[Fiendish Thingy]

43. MJ uses a much narrower definition, excluding robberies and gang violence

Or incidents where the shooter is not known.

[Recursion]

49. And we don't have comparable info for any other country that I know of

Canada and Australia do have robberies and gang violence, but just like in the US that doesn't make big headlines like a random mass shooting does.

(I wish they did; I'd rather we based our policy proposals on our way-too-high level of "normal" shootings rather than only getting worked up when it's a random shooting)

[PSPS]

41. The OP seems to be confusing "mass killings" with "mass shootings"

[MrsCoffee]

13. +1

[SWBTATTReg]

24. We're not shielded from news from Canada or anywhere else, for that matter either. ...

it's just that there is so much news going on all over the world, a barrage of all types of news 24x7, impacting everyone in different ways minute by minute (depending on what news ticks your boat).

And to your point, a lot of people here in the US do think that the US is the only place that stuff ever happens, in the world today. Of course this is patently and grossly incorrect. People should and do know, better. This is one of the 'red buttons' that rump pushes way too much, harping about immigrant this, country this, etc. He's just showing how ignorant he and what few followers he has left, feel.

Especially in the post world of the CV. The CV just showed all of us around the world just how close knit we all are, despite the distances. It also showed just how 'international' the US really is, in a morbid way. The two big CV-related infections (China and Italy) landed on both shores of the US (the west coast, and NYC), seemingly at the same time, give or take.

You're right in that, that people seem to ascribe to the belief that shootings only happen in the US. I am sure that some in the world would love that shootings of this nature would just stay localized in the US, but unfortunately, those who feel like shooting and killing others, exist all over the world.

As in any place that suffers such an event, my sorrow goes out to the victims and their families and / or friends. Innocents who unfortunately happen to be there at the same time. Even the most innocent of victims (the Sandy Hook victims) will face consequences for decades, facing a slew of conspiracy theories, etc., making the actual shootings themselves only a tiny part of the overall crime. Filth like Alex Jones, etc., who I hope looses everything he has when he lost a lawsuit to some Sandy Hook parents and victims.

[Hoyt]

42. What other countries do this in a national emergency?

[Dial H For Hero]

44. Shockingly, New Zealand.

[link:https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/03/coronavirus-queues-outside-gun-city-as-kiwis-panic-buy-firearms-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html|



New Zealanders are stocking up on firearms in their droves ahead of the closure of gun stores due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Monday, the Prime Minister announced all non-essential businesses - which includes gun shops - would close for at least four weeks from 11:59pm Wednesday, when New Zealand escalates its COVID-19 alert level from 3 to 4.

The announcement has clearly instilled panic in Kiwis, who are queuing in large numbers outside firearm retail outlets.

One video, sent to Newshub by Brad Pivac, shows dozens of people lining around the building outside Gun City in Wairau Park on Auckland's North Shore.

Photos taken outside Gun City in the central Auckland suburb of Penrose shows similar scenes - queues snaking round the block as people wait to stock up on firearms and ammunition.

[Recursion]

46. Welcome to DU!

Even though I started this thread, just a warning that gun-related threads are kind of tendentious here, so do please keep the board's rules in mind!

[Dial H For Hero]

48. Thanks!

Even though I started this thread, just a warning that gun-related threads are kind of tendentious here, so do please keep the board's rules in mind!

A bit of a hot button issue, eh? Will do.

[marble falls]

58. What a crying shame. Especially after they took so many guns off the streets.

[oioioi]

66. A thing well made...

[Recursion]

45. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

There's a Commonwealth factor at play here, I think.

[Dial H For Hero]

47. Canada as well.

https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-gun-sales-canada-rise-1493247

[malaise]

51. Saw this on both CNN and M$NBComcast

but it is a major slaughter.

[kcr]

53. We are?

https://www.cbc.ca/

OMG, how did I do that? And from the looks of this thread, we're pretty good at analyzing data, too.

[Recursion]

54. OK but people on this board are acting like a mass shooting in Canada is unthinkable

Despite the fact that they've had some pretty horrific ones in the past few years.

[cwydro]

55. Well, we're all grateful that you're here to set us to rights.

Yes indeed.

[kcr]

56. You're right. I guess they should have just shrugged it off as no big deal.

That would have been way more appropriate.

[rockfordfile]

68. Well fact is it's not even close the same

[USALiberal]

62. Lol, interesting you would post this. Nt

[USALiberal]

64. Here you go.....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/21/us/school-shooting-us-versus-world-trnd/index.html

[roamer65]

65. CBC should offer a special channel to satellite and cable providers in the US.

They would make a few bucks at it and give Americans a window into Canadian life.

[LeftInTX]

67. I somehow landed on Politico's EU site last week

Same news as here, it was "open the economy" versus "stay at home"

I didn't spend too much time because it seemed geared towards more eurocentric readers, but I realized they are having similar issues over there.